Way of the turtle

Take Your Own Path
I was 19 years old when I decided to become a trader. I was confi-
dent of my potential success and told some of my closest friends
that I would be a millionaire by age 21. I was not bragging as much
as sharing my hope for being successful in trading. It was new to
me, and it fascinated me. I made a commitment to trading even
though that meant dropping out of college. My father, who did not
have a college degree and felt that had held him back in his career,
was not pleased. But I have always been an individualist, unafraid
to voice my opinions, unafraid to disagree with authority, and so I
did not really care what everyone else thought; I knew it was the
right decision for me. My independence and outspokenness have
gotten me into trouble at times; I’m sure this has worried my
mother on numerous occasions, but it has served me well.
It is hard to imagine what life would have been like if I had not
decided to drop everything else to become a trader. I certainly
would not have responded to Richard Dennis’s ad in the paper. 
Now I see life as a trader approaches his craft: Nothing ventured,
nothing gained. Risk is your friend. Don’t be afraid of it. Under-
stand it. Control it. Dance with it. Traders take chances with good
expectation but expect to lose regularly. They are not hesitant to
act because they’re afraid that they might be wrong, a quality that
emerges in the kind of life they lead. They follow their own path
and don’t worry that sometimes they will fail in certain attempts
because they know that is part of life; they understand that failure
is a necessary prerequisite to success and learning.
I always have enjoyed extreme challenges and attempted to do
things that most people consider foolish, impractical, or impossi-
ble. I see possibilities where many people see obstacles and am
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Way of the Turtle

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compelled to pursue those opportunities. I have failed in this many
times, but I also have succeeded with each experience and learned
something new.
If people asked me what my goal was, I would answer: “To make
the world a better place, of course.” I think the power lies in all of
us to make the world better in some concrete way, however small.
That is a worthy objective. I would be far richer and more “suc-
cessful” if I had stuck to trading and never ventured into anything
new. Some of the other Turtles did that and have been wildly suc-
cessful running hedge funds with hundreds of millions or even bil-
lions of dollars under management. Similarly, if I had stuck with a